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What are the effects of extractive informal institutions on the horizontal accountability process in a developing democracy? This paper presents evidence about the harmful effects of extractive informal institutions on horizontal accountability within subnational governments in Brazil. After three decades of free and competitive elections, the institutional design of oversight institutions for state governments has hardly changed. We explore the hypothesis that more extractive informal institutions, measured by the level of income inequality, is associated with decreasing transparency levels. Given its extensive social, political, and economic diversity embedded in an overall centralized formal institutional framework, Brazil provides an appropriate setting to test the hypothesis that extractive informal institutions responsible for increased income inequality can undermine horizontal accountability in new democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the empirical data of school occupations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during 2016 to discuss the production of novel generational orders around the good of public education. Using a decolonial standpoint from where to examine modernization in Brazil and its welfare provision for children, the paper advances the notions of intergenerational practices of co-generativity and politicized generativity as instances of how Southern realities can contribute to new theoretical insights in childhood studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: this paper aims to discuss development practices through the presentation of two case studies from Latin-American contexts. This reflection was done during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Post-development perspectives were mobilized to explore new analytical dimensions in the epistemological and socio-political critique of the capitalist mode of appropriation of nature in América Latina and their potential implications amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Methodology: two study cases from Brazil and Costa Rica were elaborated. The qualitative methodological framework used to identify actors and their complex interactions became a useful tool in reconstructing different socio-political expressions, symbolic narratives, and survival/resistance strategies emerging from local groups. Results: social-environmental crisis emerging in the Anthropocene context suggest the need for different points of view and ontological turns to gain a better understanding of social change occurred in the margins of in the Western world. Latin-American societies are multiple and diverse. Both, Brazilian and Costa Rican experiences discussed in this paper, represent situated realities which cannot be generalized, but this is a rather important and critical issue. These case studies help illustrate how the non-critical adoption of hegemonic categories of sociotechnical control and securitization is inadequate to understand and explain the contingency emerging from these situated realities. Conclusions: we suggest in the final part of the paper that these reflections contribute to bring a different perspective on how science, political and nature converge in knowledge systems and how these systems are contested for different people, groups, and communities around the world. This reflection is crucial to the study of processes concerned with political legitimacy, democracy, and territorial political identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings based on over 40 hrs of rich, phenomenological narrative interview data in which five Syrian refugees describe their experiences of transitioning to a new life in Brazil. Using the Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC) as a framework for examining the relationship between a period of vulnerability, multiple social identities and wellbeing, interviews were combined with a "talking stones" technique. Key themes of identity "recovery" and "discovery" were consistent with the identity "gain" and "continuity" components of SIMIC. A theme of "adaptation" suggested that a process of continual identity construction and reconstruction is central to both outcomes. Further, themes relating to identity "constraint" suggests how some contexts can actively freeze identities, thus undermining agency and compromising wellbeing. The refugee stories analysed in this paper demonstrate how the SIMIC is a robust model for capturing many of the identity complexities within post‐migration life. Please refer to the supplementary material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focus on the religious and political issue in Brazil from a socio-historical perspective. In recent years, we have seen the rise of the right-wing, anarcho-capitalist biopower in socio-political and reactionary-conservative terms in religious terms. How was the emergence of the current religious-political panorama possible? There are two complementary interpretative hypotheses: the construction of a conservative and reactionary religious-political camp and neoliberal social and economic changes. The research methodology is qualitative and primary and secondary documentary sources on contemporary Brazilian religion and politics were used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Theory of Social Change underscores that public policy that tries to solve a collective issue will always have the capacity of impacting on the process and on the evolution of social change. Since from the start of coronavirus infection cases in Brazil, state governments established legal mechanisms for the control and coping with the disease within their respective jurisdictions. Current paper analyzes the norms and laws published by the administration of the state of Paraná, Brazil, issued between 2019 and 2020, from the point of view of the Theory of Social Change. Norms were selected by researching the digital platform Legislation State System available by the government. Research criteria were the terms "covid", "coronavirus" and "sars cov 2". However, following inclusion/exclusion criteria, only laws with direct and wide social impact were selected for analysis. Initial research produced 297 results, but only 15 attended to selection criteria. Results show the effort by the administration to control and cope with the pandemic through changes in customs involving self-protection and social movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The southern coast of Brazil has been settled in different episodes between ca. 7.5 and 0.5 ka before the present by hunter-fisher-gatherers, shell mound builders of the pre-colonial Sambaqui cultural tradition. The factors that influenced human migrations in these episodes are diverse. They include cultural changes due to the coming of other groups, chronic food shortages, sea level changes, and lagoon silting. This paper combines geological, geomorphological, meteorological, and archaeological data to show how interactions between environmental dynamics and human settlement played a central role in modeling coastal sedimentary and rocky landscapes on the southern coast of Brazil during the middle Pleistocene to late Holocene. On Costão do Ilhote, a north-south oriented granitic promontory in Laguna County, Santa Catarina State, erosional features such as facets, keels, grooves, flutes, pits, and polished surfaces that developed on granitic boulders and pavements were recognized as ventifacts. In the same context, hundreds of fixed sharpeners/polishers from the production of polished objects by the sambaqui culture have been found crosscutting the ventifacts. Based on crosscut relationships between pre-colonial aged fixed sharpeners/polishers and ventifacts, relative sea-level changes during the Holocene, the age of distinct generation of sand dunes, and the age of shellmounds (sambaquis), four potential intervals of ventifaction are proposed: last 650 ka, last 350 ka, between ca. 115 and 5 ka BP, and between ca. 2.0 and ∼0.5 ka BP, with separated estimated abrasion rates of approximately 3.5 × 10−5 mm/yr, 7.0 × 10−5 mm/yr, 1.7 × 10−4 mm/yr, and 1.3 × 10−2 mm/yr, respectively. The ca. ∼1.5 ka of the last ventifaction interval was synchronous with a period of sambaqui culture retreat in the southern coastal plain of Santa Catarina, and also coincided with a period of abundant sand availability. This period is characterized by a drastic decline in sambaquis construction along the sand barrier and paleolagoon and a migration towards lagoonal and coastal rocky promontories, including Costão do llhote. Based on these pieces of evidence, we propose to add new components to the close interactions between environmental evolution and prehistoric human occupation on the southern coast of Santa Catarina during the Holocene: the strong winds combined with sand availability. • Origin, evolution, and preservation of ventifacts on granitic rocky promontories of Brazil southern coast. • Directional data of ventifacts as Quaternary paleowind indicators. • Age relationships between ventifacts and archaeological sharpeners/polishers. • Interactions between environmental dynamics and human settlement in southern Brazil. • Integrated approach to assessing regional landscape evolution during the late Quaternary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]